LEILA FADEL, HOST:
For more on President Trump's war objectives, I'm joined by Ambassador John Bolton. He has long called for military intervention and regime change in Iran. He served as ambassador to the United Nations under former President George W. Bush and as national security adviser during the first Trump administration. He was also a key architect of the war in Iraq. Bolton is now a prolific critic of the second Trump administration, including a critic of this war. Ambassador Bolton joins me now. Good morning.
JOHN BOLTON: Good morning.
FADEL: So President Trump posted on social media on Monday to say that he's negotiating with a, quote, "new and more reasonable regime" to end the war. And here's what he told reporters on Air Force One.
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DONALD TRUMP: We've had regime change - if you look - already because the one regime was decimated, destroyed. They're all dead. The next regime is mostly dead. And the third regime, we're dealing with different people than anybody's dealt with before. It's a whole different group of people. So I would consider that regime change.
FADEL: Ambassador, what is he talking about here? Has this war actually achieved regime change?
BOLTON: No, certainly not. I mean, I think Trump is looking for a way out, and this is a way of declaring victory regardless of the actual facts. He - Trump doesn't have a philosophy, so he certainly doesn't understand people with the kind of ideology that the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard leaders have in Iran. It's been - their leadership has been purified year after year to make sure that they adhere to the precepts of the Islamic Revolution. You can take out the top 500 leaders and the ones below them are almost certain to be exactly in the same ideological mold, and maybe even tougher. So I think this is a pretext. The president's looking for a way out. There has not been regime change, and there will not be until the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard are swept away.
FADEL: You've said that stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon should be the main goal. There are now more than 50,000 U.S. troops massed in the region. Do you want to see ground troops deployed under this administration to seize Iran's uranium?
BOLTON: Well, I don't think that's necessary at this stage. I would contemplate if the regime does begin to collapse. And, you know, yesterday, Secretary of State Rubio basically said there were a lot of fractures at the top of the regime, which is exactly what we should be hoping for and expecting by the destabilizing effect of our military strikes. But I don't see the need to actually get hold of the enriched uranium or other equipment or other sensitive materials associated with the program just yet. I think if the regime were actually in collapse, it would be a different story because we don't want those materials falling into the hands of terrorists or other rogue actors.
FADEL: Do you believe there are actually fractures internally that will lead to a power struggle that could see the collapse?
BOLTON: Well, I think you can see already reporting in a lot of places in the Middle East that the nominal president, Pezeshkian, has been pushed aside by the Revolutionary Guard, that there are internal conflicts. I think Rubio's remarks confirm that. We obviously don't know the details. But this is why assisting the opponents to the regime, helping them get communicate - better communications, better organization, more resources, weapons, if they want it, and being able to work with potential defectors from the regime, maybe from the regular army that see the ship going down and don't want to go down with it.
FADEL: But do you think that is something that this administration is planning on doing? I mean, we hear very mixed messaging - there's a deal. If there isn't a deal, we'll strike more. No, we're very close to a deal, and there are negotiations.
BOLTON: Well, I don't see any evidence that the administration is working with the opposition. They - there were reports at the beginning of the war they declined to help the Kurds in Iran. I think we should have been doing this for a long time. I think it's one of the key failures if, in fact, we're not working to help the opposition. We should have been doing it before the military attacks began, and we certainly should be doing it now. And if we're not, we're not facilitating what I think the circumstances mean - indicate could be regime change.
FADEL: What do you make of Trump's latest threat to hit desalinization plants and electric plants, which intentionally targeting this type of infrastructure would be considered war crimes?
BOLTON: Well, I think the Iranians have hit desalinization plants. I don't think that's the way to go. I think another where - place where we've been failing here is, up until recently, we didn't really coordinate with the Gulf Arab states, certainly not before the hostilities began. And they've had concerns about what targets to hit in Iran for a long time because they fear retaliation. So I would work with them. I do think it's legitimate to take down the military industrial complex in Iran, and I think we've got a lot of targets on that list still to go after.
FADEL: Do you think the lack of coordination with these allies who have bore the brunt of the retaliation has impacted the relationship between the United States and its Arab allies in the region?
BOLTON: Well, I think they are less trusting of the Trump administration, that's for sure, but they have also, according to reports and indeed op-eds that have been written now strongly publicly calling for regime change because they don't want to be left in the Gulf with Iran conceivably dominant, able to open and close the Strait of Hormuz as it chooses, which if another report this morning is true, that Trump is considering declaring victory and leaving before the Strait of Hormuz is opened would be a catastrophic mistake.
The idea of regime change is to remove the threat of the Tehran regime, the ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard so they can't keep doing this, so they can't threaten the rest of the world with their nuclear weapon program and their support for terrorism. And now this - clearly this third obvious reality of shutting down the transit in the Gulf and through the strait and its effect on the world economy. You leave a damaged, wounded regime in Tehran, it will build back as quickly as it's able and it will resume all three threats over again.
FADEL: Ambassador, what would you say to Americans listening to you and thinking, well, Ambassador Bolton pushed for regime change in Iraq, a war that cost many lives, American and Iraqi, cost a lot of money, was based on intelligence of weapons of mass destruction that were not found. I mean, when you think about how military invention (ph) in Iran could go right, do you want it to go the way of Iraq?
BOLTON: I don't think there's any circumstance where the Trump administration is going to put substantial boots on the ground as happened twice against Iraq previously. If we're going to get regime change, it's going to be because we destabilized the regime by our military action, aided the opposition inside Iran and caused the regime to collapse because of internal disputes, which I think are already building. I think that is a reasonable way to do it, and people should ask how - what your tolerance is for a regime led by religious fanatics who chant death to America with nuclear weapons. My tolerance to that kind of regime is zero.
FADEL: John Bolton is a longtime U.S. diplomat who served as national security adviser in the first Trump administration. Thank you for your time, as always, Ambassador Bolton.
BOLTON: Well, thank you again. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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